Kenya must consider plight of refugee journalists

Today, CPJ partnered with Reporters
Without Borders and Rory Peck Trust
in a joint open
letter calling on Kenya's Cabinet Secretary of Interior, Joseph Ole Lenku,
to provide clarity on the government's refugee policy and to exempt journalists
from forced relocation to the refugee camps. On March 25, Lenku ordered
all urban refugees to relocate to one of two refugee camps in a bid to tighten
security amid continuing violence, including an attack on a church in
Mombasa. His order came despite the fact that a similar government directive in
2012 was ruled unconstitutional
by the High Court.

Collective research
by our three organizations shows that exiled Somali and Ethiopian journalists
are not safe
in Kenya's refugee camps, where Ethiopian security agents and Somalia's
Al-Shabaab militants operate--the very same threats that most such journalists
fled in the first place. Meanwhile, life for refugee journalists in Nairobi has
been made even harder
than usual. Kenyan police conduct nightly raids
on the homes of Somali refugees, demanding bribes to avoid forceful relocation
to the camps, local journalists say.

Two Somali
journalists registered with UNHCR, Hassan Sheikh Omar and Mahad Omar, were
recently arrested and sent to Kakuma Refugee Camp. Hassan, a former Horn Cable Television journalist, is
especially vulnerable since he still suffers from a knife wound previously inflicted
by Al-Shabaab members in Somalia, local journalists told me. Many other Somali
and Ethiopian journalists have been caught up in police sweeps but released,
some after paying bribes: Our research indicates at least 16 exiled journalists
were arrested in April alone.